'AS LIVE' PRODUCTION: Script Draft 1

After researching about how to link two different ideas together, Katie and I finished the first version of the script. We only had to write in the dialogue because it then gets passed onto the directors who put in the visuals - however, we added in a few visual notes for our sake so we could picture what was happening while writing the content.

Katie did the first half and I did the second, we then put it together and made sure it flowed throughout the two halves. 

Studio Script Version 1:



Katie and I worked on the introduction together because it is an important part of the show, which neither of us were really confident on. The main task here was to introduce the show, why we are here and what we aim to achieve, we have written this by saying "Each week we'll be looking at the current trends, heading out to different locations and treating you to a few surprises here and there". This is then followed by the teaser to briefly explain what is coming up in the show. We are debating whether to have this pre-recorded or to have the presenters say it as they walk from the catwalk over to the sofas - which ever is easier during rehearsals.

This version contains all the dialogue, but visuals and duration times are still to be confirmed. These will be confirmed and written in the script for version 2. The line spacing on version 1 is 1.5 however this changed once I embedded the script - the final script will have 1.5 line spacing. The last segment - the drag act, is also not finished yet as we haven't confirmed who the drag will be yet, the Skype audition will happen this week so by version 2 we should have the drag act and that segment completed on the script. The models are also still to be confirmed at this stage so there are a few gaps in the script where their names and job's would be.

This script is currently an AV script, which isn't the correct studio script layout, but this will be changed for version 2 - the AV script is purely for our use to focus on getting the information and content down first. Version 1 is on the shared google docs drive for the production teams to have a look at. This may help them with the content in their parts of the show, e.g. VT and promo. 

'AS LIVE' PRODUCTION: Changes to Steals of the Season (Segment 1)

As Steals of the Season is the biggest segment there is a lot of content involved and we need to keep it interesting for the audience. Over the past week, ideas for this segment have been changed and tweaked:

Steals of the Season - in studio

Katie and I have agreed the trends which will feature on screen and on the models. I did the research for the upcoming trends for S/S18 and we chose from the most common ones that came up on fashion websites / magazines:

Women

Trends of the week for catwalk:

- Summer plaid

Trends of the week for screen 
(will only use 3/4):
- Sheer clothing

- Trench coats – (can talk about how teddy coats have been big over winter but to watch the rise of trench coats)

- OTT earrings

- Pastel colours

Men

Trends of the week for catwalk:

- Floral prints – vintage colouring (deep reds and blues with silky creams and whites)

Trends of the week for screen 
(will only use 3/4):
- Baggy high waisted trousers – plaid or stripe patterns

- Velvet and satin

- Sportswear zip up turtlenecks

- Pattern mixing – presenters can joke that their grandad does this already so is accidentally fashionable

After agreeing with these trends for the show, Katie added full outfits with the trends and added up a rough price of what we would need to spend to make this studio section happen:

Katie's research - outfits and prices

TOTAL BUDGET: £146.88

Some of these items we can borrow from people, Katie already has the pastel trousers (these are one size so will fit any size model) which we can use, and Alex's friend has a few floral shirts which we can use - however, this is a good estimate for this section of the budget.

Steals of the Season - VT (clothing challenge)

The VT team had a meeting and thought about another way to film the Steals of the Season VT. To prevent repetitiveness and to create a smaller budget they came up with the idea of just having one presenter shopping for the other one. They could have a coin toss at the beginning to see who's going to shop for the other. When they're back in the studio, this way we might be able to have the other presenter wearing the outfit rather than having two mannequins but this does still mean a quick outfit change.

I think it will be worth having the fashion expert presenter going to shop for the other one because the expert will know more about fashion / what they're buying / why - because it's in fashion now / future fashion etc. 

New idea
Charity Shop Challenge:
One presenter sets the other presenter with a challenge of going into charity shops and trying to find these trends or similar in the independent shops.

Reason for a place in the show:
It is harder to find an on-trend or popular outfit in a charity shop (personally I don't shop in them because they contain weird / 'out there' and different clothes and I feel anything on sale in a high street store is in fashion at the time - no matter what the price). If I could find fashionable things in charity shops, I would go there to save money. I'm sure I am not the only person who thinks this, so this is the reason for featuring it in the show. It's also not following the mainstream which is the aim of the show.

In our 3rd production meeting, we agreed that the Steals of the Season VT needed more of a challenge - using charity shops will be the bigger challenge. The VT team have also lowered the budget to £20, because clothes are cheaper in charity shops, this also brings our overall budget down slightly.

'AS LIVE' PRODUCTION: (Lecture) Production Role Critical Report - Guidance

30% of mark (2000 words)

Include research into studio production and the specific professional role you have undertaken and how that research informed your actual role and the production.

For this reason it should not wait until the production is completed to be written. 

Show the reader that you can critically evaluate your own work and that you understand professional approaches and context through a focus on academic referencing throughout. 

Thus you will demonstrate and evidence that all decisions and critical reflections are informed by research and development by use of appropriate quotations. 

Producer - scriptwriting, delegation, creative side, test shoots

Delivered in a report style, it is a document that allows us to see now just what you have done but rather how and why you have chosen to do something - methodology

This does not mean it is merely a description - it must contain relevant research to effectively support your work 

Journal content - you research into the wider context of your chosen are of work and established methodologies and processes - you must research your chosen role.

What to include and structuring 
Draw up a general list of areas you will need to cover

Overall rule - tell them what you are going to say (intro), tell them (main body) and then tell them what you told them (conclusion)

Work out a logical structure before you start to writes

Basic logic that allows us to explore the subject - rough draft not too rough

Headings and subheadings
Intro
My role - brief overview of role
Creative methodologies - teaching how to do the role
Critical reflections
Conclusion
Bibliography
Illustration
Appendix

Format
Bullet points
Titles, headings
Harvard 
Page numbers
Footnotes
Bibliography 

Sources of information
People
Books
IT/online
Events and places

Style of writing
'Obtrusive'
Relevant reliable recognised
Avoid colloquialisms
Spag and avoid overly long sentences

Check before submit

Use the draft opportunity for guidance - provide evidence of your research plan and quotations you will see

Show me your report plan re:headings / subheadings and likely content

'AS LIVE' PRODUCTION: Studio Workshop with Del

We had an afternoon with Del focusing on camera work and vision mixing. I was looking forward to this workshop to finally experiment with vision mixing as I was very interested in this from the start. We started the workshop with the cameras - we also got out the jib and track. This was a good refresher course as we haven't used the cameras this year properly yet and I haven't used the jib and track much before.

Track and dolly

Camera work
In small groups, we went round each camera set up - standard tripod, jib, track and the shoulder camera - and experimented with them all. With the tripod, we just familiarised ourselves with how to put the camera on and take it off the tripod, we also put it in focus and adjusted the white balance - all the normal things to do to set up a camera. 

The jib was next and it was a new piece of equipment to me, Gavin showed our group how to assemble it and we tried a few sweeping shots. Jack sat in a chair and I started up high in the top corner of the studios and moved the camera diagonally down to Jack. This was difficult as he didn't always end up in the middle of the shot at the end - the camera might have been too high or too low. However, the more I practiced it the easier it became. 

The track was third, this was also new to me. I enjoyed using this one because it made the camera movement really smooth and the shots looked really good. Gavin had jack at the end of the track and moved the camera backwards, while changing the focus - this made Jack stay the same size but the background zoomed in and out. This looked really good, it would probably be used in a scene about time changing / a crazy dream / flashback sort of thing in a film. 

The shoulder camera was last. I didn't use this one myself but it looked heavy - especially after having it on your shoulder for a while. It would be ideal to use for effective handheld shots.

I learnt that in our production the camera operators will have to control their own iris and exposure to match all the cameras together. In a real life situation there would be people in the vision control room who sort out the exposure and iris on the cameras so they are all the same. 

Reflection:
- It was a good experience to see and have a feel of the shoulder camera, as we want to go into the audience in our Fashion Fails section with a handheld camera. This would definitely be the camera we would want to use. It was relatively smooth and not too bumpy so it would give us a good shot of the audience member who is speaking about their fashion fail.

- We would like a jib shot at the beginning and end of our show and a few in the middle, but for just these few shots we aren't sure if it's worth having a jib at all. We, mainly the directors, will re-think this later on when we have the set planned out on the studio floor.

- From the original pitch, we planned to have a track to give a good panning / establishing shot. Now, we realised that we definitely need a panning shot because the presenters walk from the soft area to the catwalk and back. The track may be useful for this - again, it was very handy to try these camera set ups out so we could have a good feel. We now know that the track gives us a very smooth shot, whereas panning with a camera on a tripod may not be as smooth as it can tilt at the same time as well if not tightened. 

- Del used a few words that I hadn't heard of before - ENG (electronic news gathering), WFM (wave form monitor) and PSC (portable single camera). It was helpful to hear these words being said in a studio situation because in the real world we will need to use and understand these words. 


Vision mixing
After the break we went into the gallery and learnt how to vision mix. This will be Alex's job on the broadcast day but it was interesting to have a go at it myself. It seemed complicated but once I positioned my fingers in the correct places it was just a case of knowing which finger was on which camera button without looking. Del called out the directors commands and we all had a go at following them and flashing the correct camera up onto the preview screen and on his command - the transmission screen. 

I was really helpful having all the camera screens in front of me, on the day this will help Alex and the directors to see if the next shot is ready or not.

Our next session with Del will include people out in the studio in front of the cameras and we will be practicing a real live situation, we will also be introduced to the 'talk back' and will be using that too.

Reflection:
- I knew there was such thing as a vision mixer but didn't know what they did exactly so today was very useful and helped us learn the basics of vision mixing. I also think I did a good job and only made one mistake of cutting instead of mixing. I would definitely consider doing more vision mixing in the future.

- Alex did really well and I have no doubts that he'll give an amazing performance on the day.

'AS LIVE' PRODUCTION: Studio Script Research

As producers, it's mine and Katie's job to write the dialogue part of the studio script. This then gets passed on to the directors and they add in the cuts and camera shots and movements.

We split the studio script into our chosen halves - Katie on the first half (introduction, Steals of the Season & Fashion Fails) and I had the second half (Old to New, Independent Sellers, Drag and the outro). We wrote the mock script as an audio / visual script to start with to get the content and words down and then I formatted it into a proper studio script for the first version of the real script. We had one from a couple of years ago to compare and learn from. This script method was very different to what we've done before. I started writing the dialogue down in the right column and I needed to add directions such as PTC and links to VT, as well as all the dialogue. 

Studio script example

Helen brought up the fact that the words don't flow very well from different topics / sections in my first attempt at the studio script. She also said it needed to be more personal, e.g. one of the models might be a nurse and then we can say something like "so [MODEL 1] you're a nurse, how different is it wearing this instead of your uniform" etc. This made a lot of sense to me and would help the conversations flow better between presenters and models.

I had a look into other chat shows on television now, such as The One show, Strictly Come Dancing and This Morning to watch how they change gears and into the next topic. 

The One Show
The relation between Alex Jones and Matt Baker is very natural. They have actual conversations around the scripted dialogue making their relationship more real.

They change gears and into the next segment by relating it to the previous topic. Here is an example of an episode (20/02/18) in which they are having a discussion with Stephen Graham and Lennie James about their new show and how they change into the next topic:

"We're going to keep you relaxed tonight, which is the idea...but just how relaxed would you feel if you opened up your cupboards, had a good rummage through them and we said to you that you had to stop using all the plastic in your life?"

By using the words relaxed they have linked an interview with two actors to a family who are planning to go 'plastic free' in their household to reduce the amount of plastic they throw away.

They do it again to transfer from the plastic free segment to football:

"Well, the congratulations are going to continue now... because we would like to congratulate League One's Wigan who knocked Manchester City out of the FA Cup..." 

They congratulate the family on attempting to go plastic free, and then link the congratulations to a winning football team. This is my job as producer and scriptwriter to link our different segments together so the show flows better. 


This Morning
I looked into a few different shows to see how they link different segments together. On this specific This Morning episode (20/02/18), they start by talking about KFC and eating chicken in front of the television while watching Coronation Street, which then led them onto the two actresses from Coronation Street who they are speaking to next. This interview then leads onto the phone-in which is always related to something in the show, they bring it up at the end of the interview by saying:

"So, if you find yourself in a similar situation to Rana and you're struggling with your sexuality then why don't you get involved in today's phone-in..."

This isn't the usual way of linking segments because the phone-in is a coming up segment but it is still put in that part of the show so it can link to the previous segment. 

This Morning don't link all of their segments, sometimes they just say and "now, next is... / our next guest is..." and go onto a completely different topic.

More recently, I was watching This Morning and noticed another link from one segment to another. It was in the half term so the hosts were Eamonn and Ruth, and they were talking about Jamelia who sung Superstar, who was going to be on the show later.

"I remember getting a preview of Superstar for the national lottery on a saturday night, ahead of everybody else, and it was the thing from the national lottery jet set."
"Well there we are, you can reminisce when she’s here."
"I will do - talking of saturday night, we’ll be joined by the Voice runner up, Donel and his dancing nan, Nita, at 11:20"

Here, Eamonn talks about his own experience involving Jamelia, and then links it with, "talking of Saturday night..." to which they then go on to talk about the runner up of The Voice, who will also be joining them later on in the show.

Loose Women
Loose Women also link their segments well, for example this episode (16/02/18) Stacey Solomon, explains how the press thought she was engaged when she was just being silly and saying 'I said yes' when she was out to dinner, the panel were all laughing at her story and Andrea McLean says:

"But, you know, staying on the subject of marriage, and this genuinely made us sad today - this is the news about the end of a marriage coming out today..."

So, with this method, they actually say 'well we're staying on that same subject because...'. This flowed well and was appropriate because they were staying on the same subject, just the sad side to it. We wouldn't be able to do this on our show because all our segments are so different. We could possibly say it when we introduce a VT because they all link in with their specific segments. We would have to try it out and see if it flows well with our content first. 

Another way they introduce another topic, is:

"Now this is completely different..."

Here, they have actually said that this is completely different but it's still a relevant story which they want to talk about. If our show was real and was a weekly thing then maybe we could use links like these but as we're only creating the first half an hour, I think we can link the segments to previous content making the whole show flow well.

This episode of Loose Women included a weekly 'fun facts' segment where one woman had to dig around in a ball pit to find a number - the number then corresponded to a number of a fun fact which another woman read out. The woman didn't find all the numbers so she said she would go back at the end of the show:

"At the end of the show I will go back and find it"
"Oh no we can't wait that long, so shall i tell you what the fun fact was?...Did you know - birds don't fart. Who knew?...but do robots fart? There's a thought, they're making them more and more realistic, who knows? And they say robots will one day take over the world..."

They manage to link the 'fun facts' segment to the next segment, about robots, in a fun and interesting way, which has got the viewer interested in the next topic about the robots. 


Evaluation of research 
All three shows have featured current issues and there's been a reason why it's been spoken about. For example, The One Show had the plastic segment which is very current as selected supermarkets are going plastic free on their shelves to prevent plastic waste, and on This Morning they start with introducing the cooking segment and how to create your own KFC because some of the KFC stores are closing around the country. We need to get across why we've chosen to speak about our segments and the reasoning behind it / why we're talking about it now. We know the reasons why but we need this to come across in the actual script.

After researching into different ways chat shows change into different topics, I have started applying this into my second half of the script by linking Fashion Fails to Old to New by saying:

"I had one of those [dresses] back in the day! I think it’s at the bottom of my wardrobe now and it’s never seeing the light of day again!...Talking of old clothes being left at the back of your wardrobe, you should think twice before de-cluttering and throwing them out! Did you know they may be back in fashion?"

Section of Steal the Style studio script - Version 1

References:

- BBC iPlayer. (n/d). The One Show. Available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09rblws/the-one-show-20022018. Last accessed 21st Feb 2018.

- ITV Hub (n/d). This Morning. Available: https://www.itv.com/hub/this-morning/1a1960a5733. Last accessed 21st Feb 2018.

- ITV Hub. (n/d). Loose Women. Available: https://www.itv.com/hub/loose-women/1a3173a2967. Last accessed 21st Feb 2018.

'AS LIVE' PRODUCTION: Progress Meeting

Jemma has scheduled progress meetings as well as our production meetings with Helen, so we can have small meetings with each team, before our bigger production meetings. While I was involved with the mock production, Katie sat in on the progress meetings with VT and Promo, we updated each other after on the mock production and meetings. 

VT MEETING

Points discussed in the meeting include:

4 VTs confirmed

Steals of the Season (presenter challenge VT):

- Budget £30 each for presenter challenge VT

- Needs four models**

Presenter challenge

- Filmed in two separate groups

- Laura covering locations

Possibly thinking £60 for this segment, will depend on the store

Fashion Fails (online fails VT):

- Screen recording, GVs and voice overs

- Documentary style (interviews)

- Information heavy with a “slight comedy aspect to it”

- Will include a "5 ways to avoid this happening to you" section

- Researchers looking for case studies

- Researchers looking at copyrights incase logos are included

- This VT needs a new presenter

- interview someone who has had a fashion fail

Old to New (fashion shoot VT): 

- 3 items of clothing from different decades e.g. leather jacket, double denim, baggy / skinny jeans 
- 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s 
- Fashion shoot style video / Buzzfeed style video
e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrp0zJZu0a4&t=81s

- Look for Dad’s-researchers looking for shoes on lend?

- Using the presenter from online fails if needed for a voice over

- Two models, one female and one male-20’s/30’s max

- Researchers finalise styles included

DIY / Independent Store (making the clothes VT):

- Using “online/independent sellers”

- Contributor found and hugely up for it - George Nicholls has the contact

- Following someone

VT needs a presenter, contributor, 8 models (possibly reusing models) / everyday people

Need a list of who is doing VT during production

Getting dates for VT for presenters

PROMO MEETING

Looking into doing a poster

Trailer ideas:

- Person walking into a store stealing a mannequin, i.e, Steal the Style - using same presenters from the studio

- Connor looking into locations in Sittingbourne. UCA Rochester have said we can use their fashion space

- Promo with presenters, various 10 sec long clips - Maidstone Studios with logo and time included at the end

- 1 trailer with a lot of variety 10 second clips

Style and graphics:

- Preferably keeping the colour scheme of red, pink and white, across all promo

- Stings

- Logos for trailers, possibly a behind the scenes logo

Using a street as a background for images/videos

Using art students as models?

Website:

- Already started - really good - going to continue the style through all social media

- Have it as an established website - articles, have pictures relevant to the articles

Social media accounts:

- Instagram and Facebook - link the accounts for the ratio so it’s the same - talk to Simon on this

- Snapchat - behind the scenes, unscripted for behind the scenes, fun and bouncy

- Facebook- logo for the profile picture, banner either a video or picture

Danny will talk to UCA Rochester photography students - possibly using fashion pictures from students at UCA

Back drop needed - preferably pink

Rochester high street for photos?

Production Manager has contacts for models

Locations needed:

Base room, lecture room, Rochester highstreet, UCA-project space

Things to ask Simon:

- Aspect ratio

- Using logos at the ends of the show / videos

- Website with Katie P

Talent and locations

Steals of the Season VT 

- studio presenters on the challenge

Fashion fails   

- 2-3 contributors in audience for fashion fails 

- VT want their own presenter & person for case study

Old to new 

- still need a dad willing to go on the programme

DIY 

- got one Etsy seller interested 

Drag act

- 2 drag acts interested

We are ready to tell Del our final decisions tomorrow (13th Feb) about the VTs and our progress on the characters and locations, which were the bits we were still unsure about in our last meeting with Del.